The Edinburgh Man Who Inspired Jekyll and Hyde — and Was Hanged on Gallows He Built Himself

In 1786, one of Edinburgh’s most respected citizens was shaking hands with his clients by day — and robbing them that same night. William Brodie had spent years building an entire city’s trust. Then he used it against every person who had ever admired him.

A Pillar of Society

William Brodie was everything Georgian Edinburgh admired.

He was a master cabinet maker with a well-established shop on the Royal Mile. He sat on the city council. He held the title of Deacon of the Incorporation of Wrights and Masons — the powerful craftsmen’s guild that gave him his infamous name.

He dined with merchants and magistrates. He was welcomed inside the grandest homes in Edinburgh’s fashionable New Town. His word, to all who knew him, was his bond.

Not one of them suspected the truth.

The Secret Life Behind the Respectability

Behind the respectable facade was a man in serious trouble.

Brodie kept two mistresses and fathered children with both. He was a compulsive gambler — cockfighting, card games, anything that promised quick relief from his mounting debts.

But he had a gift no other thief in Edinburgh possessed. When visiting clients’ homes to measure for furniture, he studied their locks. He pressed soft wax against their keys. Later, he cut exact copies in his workshop. And when the household was asleep, he returned.

It was precise. It was audacious. For years, it worked perfectly.

The Gang Nobody Suspected

By 1786, Brodie had assembled a small circle of accomplices: a former soldier, a gambling companion, and a locksmith.

Together they robbed grocer’s shops, goldsmiths’ premises, and the University of Edinburgh. They broke into Edinburgh’s Professional Exchange and made off with silver candlesticks and a gold pocket watch.

Brodie remained entirely above suspicion. He socialised with the very men he had robbed, offering his sympathy about the brazen criminals plaguing Edinburgh’s good citizens. He sat at the same tables. He shook the same hands.

The Raid That Went Wrong

In March 1788, Brodie made his boldest — and final — mistake.

He led his gang into the General Excise Office on Chessel’s Court, just off the Royal Mile. They had been told the safe held thousands of pounds sterling.

It held sixteen pounds.

Worse, a government excise officer walked in and interrupted them mid-raid. The gang scattered into the Edinburgh dark. One of them — a man named John Brown — was later arrested for an unrelated crime. He made a deal with the authorities. He gave them William Brodie’s name.

Flight, Capture, and the Gallows

Brodie fled to Amsterdam, convinced he had escaped.

He had not. He was recognised in the Netherlands, arrested, and returned to Edinburgh in irons. His trial was the sensation of the season. Edinburgh society — the same society that had admired and trusted him for decades — packed the public gallery to watch.

On 1 October 1788, William Brodie was hanged in the Lawnmarket.

The gallows were newly redesigned — and Brodie himself had helped design them as part of his civic duties. Some accounts claim he quietly modified the drop mechanism, convinced he could cheat death one final time.

He could not.

The Young Edinburgh Writer Who Took Note

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. He grew up hearing stories like Brodie’s. He walked the same cobbled streets. He understood, perhaps earlier than most, that Edinburgh wore two very different faces — one refined and respectable, one raw and secretive.

In 1882, Stevenson co-wrote a stage play called Deacon Brodie, or the Double Life. Four years later, he published The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Jekyll’s daylight respectability. Hyde’s nocturnal destruction. One man, two entirely separate lives. Edinburgh had given Stevenson the blueprint — and William Brodie had lived it.

Finding Brodie in Edinburgh Today

Walk the Royal Mile today and you will find Deacon Brodie’s Tavern — a pub named in his dubious honour, close to the site of his old workshop. It is a fitting legacy for a man who existed in plain sight while hiding everything that mattered.

Edinburgh rewards those who look beneath its polished surface. The hidden city beneath Edinburgh’s busiest street tells its own stories of lives kept secret for centuries below the cobblestones.

And high on Arthur’s Seat, seventeen tiny coffins were discovered that no historian has ever fully explained.

Edinburgh keeps its secrets well. William Brodie understood that better than anyone — and for a remarkable length of time, the city kept his.